Saturday, June 7, 2008

I was in the Katz Kollel at YU when the now famous/notorious R' Avraham Shirman visited during the fall/winter of 1997 to deliver a series of shiurim. At the time, he was head of Tel Aviv's chief rabbinical court. Today, of course, he is head of Israel's highest rabbinical court, and is now engaged, it sometimes seems, in churning the waters of Israeli jurisprudence by issuing as many controversial decisions as he can before being shown the door.

This past Shabbos I came across the mareh mekomos [source references] from some of those shiurim [I never get rid of anything], and found his choice of topic noteworthy, if somewhat ironic given current events.

The title for the series was:חוקי יסוד זכויות אדם לאור תורת ישראל ומשפטיה ופסיקת בתי הדין בישראלThe Basic Law of the Rights of Man, by the light of the Torah and its laws, and the decisions of Israeli courts

In his series of shiurim, R' Shirman delineates the halachic view of the honor/rights due every person due to his basic personhood, the question of interference with another person's rights, the right to freedom and to not be detained, the power of the government to create laws regarding human rights, and the role of a halachic court which must deal with the Basic Law.

I must admit that I was never the best at sitting in a shiur; although I had the chance to learn from many outstanding talmidei chachamim, in my shortsighted youth I much preferred to learn on my own. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to me that I can't remember anything about the shiurim themselves.

Nonetheless, I hope to make some time over the next few weeks to look over these mareh mekomos carefully; I wonder what he had to say on these rather fraught subjects.